Welcome to Noomi Rapace Online, your premiere resource on the Swedish actress. Best known for her performances as Lisbeth Salander in the original "The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo" film trilogy, "Prometheus" and the recent Indie hit "Lamb", Noomi Rapace has emerged as one of the most exciting European actresses of the last years. This fansite provides all latest news, photos, editorials and video clips on her past and present work. Enjoy your stay and check back soon.
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Ever since her international breakthrough with the “Millennium” films, Noomi Rapace has been in consideration or has been attached to a large number of projects – from Tom Cruise blockbusters to gender-swapping Shakespeare. Here’s a list of all known projects that Noomi was in negotiations for – as well as a production history on why the project fell apart or moved ahead without Noomi.
Premise: The story revolves around a woman who wakes up in a cryogenic medical pod and finds herself alone with no memory. She has 90 minutes of oxygen left and must figure out how to save herself.
Production History: In July 2017, it was announced Anne Hathaway had joined the cast of the film and would serve as a producer on the film, with Echo Lake Entertainment and IM Global attached to produce the film (under the working title O2), from a screenplay by Christie LeBlanc. In February 2020, it was announced Noomi Rapace had joined the cast of the film, replacing Hathaway, with Franck Khalfoun directing the film, and Alexandre Aja serving as producer. But by July 2020, Mélanie Laurent, Mathieu Amalric, and Malik Zidi joined the cast, replacing Rapace, with Aja serving as director replacing Khalfoun. The film, now titled “Oxygen”, was released on Netflix on May 12, 2021.
Premise: A gender-swapped version of Hamlet’s famous play.
Production History: In December of 2020, The Hollywood Reporter shared news of Noomi Rapace signing on to play a version of Shakespeare’s famed Danish Prince Hamlet in a new film adaptation from director Ali Abbasi (Border). Abbasi will reunite with his Danish Border producers Meta Film for the project. Iceland’s Sjo´n, who co-wrote Robert Eggers’ upcoming The Northman, is penning the script. Meta Film’s Stine Meldgaard Madsen will produce in collaboration with Boom Films. The press release featured a quote by Rapace:
Hamlet is a dream project in its purest and most explosive way,” said Rapace in a statement. “I’ve been hoping, dreaming, wishing for this as long as I’ve been an actress. I base this as much on the material as on the creative alliance that surrounds it… To take on a Danish story with a Scandinavian touch and bring it out into the world with this group of people is a dream.
Principle photography is set for autumn 2021. So far, the first news have been the last and its fair to say, three years later, that the project has been canned.
Premise: The story follows an innocent young man named Jack who goes on an epic quest to rescue his sister after she is kidnapped by violent killer “Cut Throat Bill” (supposed to be played by Rapace) and her gang. Jack enlists the help of a crafty bounty hunter named Reginald Jones, a grave-digging alcoholic son of an ex-slave, and a street-smart prostitute. The three track the girl into the deadly no-man’s land known as The Big Thicket – a place where blood and chaos reign.
Production History: Noomi’s involvement in “The Thicket” was reported by Deadline in February of 2020, only a couple of weeks short of the novel Corona pandemic. The article further named Charlie Plummer and Sophie Lillis as co-stars for the already announced Peter Dinklage. In early 2023, Juliette Lewis joined the cast to replace Rapace. Principal photography began in Calgary, Canada and wrapped in March of 2023. The film released in September of 2024.
Premise: Sylvia Rafael was a South African-born agent who rose to prominence in Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. She was noted for her intelligence work in locating Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of Palestine’s Black September organization and the figure behind the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But the mission led to her involvement in the infamous Lillehammer affair, in which an innocent Moroccan waiter was mistakenly identified as Salameh and killed by Rafael’s team. Rafael was tried in Norway and imprisoned. She died in South Africa in 2005.
Production History: On the heels of “Close”, Vicky Jewson’s 2019 thriller in which Noomi played a bodyguard, Variety reported on their second collaboration to bring Sylvia Rafael’s story to the screen. “What is so enticing about this project is the opportunity to tell the true story of an extraordinary woman, who sacrificed a huge part of her life for a country that was not originally her own,” Jewson said. “I am keen to explore the unique personality of someone who put their life at risk on a daily basis and lived under a permanent dual identity, searching beyond the often glamorously perceived title of ‘spy’ to the gritty reality of this life and what drove her.” The first news remained the last one as well, since the project never moved on from the initial announcement.
Premise: Based on the bestselling Japanese novel of the same name by Arata Tendo sees Rapace play a world-weary homicide detective on the trail of sex traffickers. The investigator finds spiritual meaning in her life when she comes across a mystical young man who mourns those dead who have no-one to mourn for them.
Production History: Screen Daily was first to report on the project, based on the book, known as Itamu Hito in Japan, which won the prestigious Naoki Prize in 2008. Ezra Miller was announced as well for the co-lead, but the original news remained the only one on the project which never moved forward.
Premise: A customs officer who can smell fear develops an unusual attraction to a strange traveler while aiding a police investigation which will call into question her entire existence.
Production History: In what would have been an amazing casting coup, Noomi was originally offered the lead role of Tina by director Ali Abbasi. According to the podcast Tasteless with Emily Higgins, Rapace mentioned that she had to turn the role down because she was in another contract already (most probably Prime’s second season of “Jack Ryan”). Abbasi cast Eva Melander instead in a tour-de-force performance that won her a Best Actress Guldbagge Award. “Border” was nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 2019 Academy Awards.
Premise: A teenage boy is born with special abilities and spends his childhood switching names and cities to keep his identity hidden. When his conservative, suburban neighborhood discovers the risk he poses and blames him for a mass, tragic event, he and his mother must flee from the authorities who are looking to destroy him and seek the trust and support of an underground rebellion group.
Production History: On May 12, 2016, Variety reported that Noomi Rapace will star in the science-fiction thriller “Boy” with Danish helmer Jonas Arnby on board and Lotus Entertainment launching international sales for “Boy” at the Cannes Film Festival. Mattson Tomlin’s script for “Boy” was named to the 2015 Black List. A filming schedule was eyed for August of 2016, but beyond the initial press release, the project didn’t move along.
Premise: Amy Winehouse’s tremendous soulful vocal talent and songwriting ability established her as one of the most innovative artists of our time. She used the sound of her idols, Etta James & Billie Holiday, to reinvent jazz and blues for a new generation in her album Back To Black, which sold millions of copies worldwide and garnered her countless accolades, including 5 Grammy Awards.
Production History: On November 06, 2015, Screen Daily reported that a biopic on the late Amy Winehouse is in the works, and Noomi Rapace is looking likely to play Winehouse. August Rush director Kirsten Sheridan is looking to stick with music for what is currently known simply as Amy Winehouse, which she has written for Subotica Films and which is now out looking for financing and distribution deals. Also in negotiation? Those all-important music rights, which can make or break a biopic like this. There’s a chance that could be a tough hurdle as Winehouse’s father is also reportedly trying to get his own film about his daughter made. In October 2018, it was announced that Winehouse’s estate had signed a deal to make a biopic about her life and career. In July 2022, Deadline Hollywood reported that StudioCanal UK was moving forward with a feature film entitled Back to Black portraying Winehouse’s life and music career. Sam Taylor-Johnson directed from a script by Matt Greenhalgh.
Premise: Callas is considered to be one of the most influential female opera singers of the 20th century, and the biopic will focus on her passionate relationship with Aristotle Onassis, a romance that spanned almost two decades.
Production History: In a major scoop for Noomi’s career, Entertainment Weekly reported in May 2015 that Rapace has signed on to play one of the most famous opera singers of all time: Maria Callas. “Niki Caro will direct Callas and has adapted the screenplay from Alfonso Signorini’s biography, Too Proud, Too Fragile. Content Media is introducing the film to distributors at Cannes. Callas is considered to be one of the most influential female opera singers of the 20th century, and the biopic will focus on her passionate relationship with Aristotle Onassis, a romance that spanned almost two decades. “We fell in love with Callas instantly,” Content’s president of film, Jamie Carmichael, said. “It’s such an emotional and powerful story of one of the world’s great romances—and we’re certain that audiences around the world will be charmed and entranced by the passion, beauty, and operatic splendor of this epic tale.” A week later, Noomi attended a photocall at the Cannes Film Festival to promote the just-announced project. Unfortunately, it went down-hill from there and the project never made it into production.
Premise: The project adapts the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine, written by Brock Yates. The book recounted Ferrari’s ascent — working for Alfa Romeo, first as a racer and then as a developer, founding his own company in 1947, racing victories in the ’50s and ’60s, letting Fiat slowly take control of the company. But it also showed Ferrari’s tyrannical and manipulative nature, how he pushed drivers to the breaking point (and even death), his hatred of his lifelong marriage and his many affairs.
Production History: In October of 2015, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Michael Mann’s Enzo Ferrari project with Christian Bale in the lead and Noomi Rapace in early negotiations to play his long-suffering wife, Laura Dominica. In January of 2015, Deadline reported that Bale had left the project, citing health concerns over the weight gain he needed to achieve to play the role. According to their article, there was no word if Rapace was still involved. Another 15 months later, Hugh Jackman was in talks to play the lead role, but the project fell apart before it was finally made, still by Mann, in 2023 with Adam Driver taking on the role of Enzo Ferrari and Penelope Cruz in the role of
Laura Dominica.
Premise: A New York-based thriller on the relationship between an ex-detainee of Guantanamo Bay, and a prostitute who is on the run from a crime boss.
Production History: The project was first announced by Deadline on May 14, 2013, announcing Matthias Schoenarts and Noomi Rapace in the leads with a production start in January 2014. In a December 2013 interview with The Playlist, Noomi talked about her character:
It’s actually one of the most beautiful scripts I’ve read, it’s a fantastic love story. I would say if you take “Taxi Driver” and “Leaving Las Vegas” and throw them together … It’s an intense story between my character who is a heroin addict and prostitute in New York and Matthias Schoenaerts, he is playing the other lead. We worked together on “Animal Rescue” and we really connected but we only had two scenes together. We felt straight away that we wanted to work together again, and he gave me the script and I read it and I thought it was amazing.
Production moved on the planned January schedule, and in February of 2014, Idris Elba was announced to replace Schoenarts, with Sam Wortington to co-star. However, by September 2014, Noomi Rapace told reporters at the San Sebastian Film Festival that the project was called off shortly before filming began, also detailing her preparation for the role that might explain some of the stranger looks she sported throughout the year: “or “Alive Alone”, I had the feeling to be extremly vulnerable. I was supposed to play a drug addicted prostitute. For this, I starved myself to a minimum weight and have spent much time with prostitutes and drug addicts to really feel how they live. I wanted to dig as deep as possible into human abyss and shut myself out of the real world. Unfortunately, the project was called off shortly before filming began.”
Premise: In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called “brilliants,” and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in—and betray his own kind.
Production History: Variety reported that Will Smith and Noomi Rapace have officially signed on to co-star in “Brilliance”, which is being helmed by Nigerian director Julius Onah. Legendary Pictures is producing the thriller based on the novel from Marcus Sakey’s emerging trilogy. The second book in this series is set to hit stores later this year, and if Brilliance shines at the box office we can assume sequels – for which its stars are likely already contracted – will follow. The following month, again according to Variety, Jared Leto was in talks to replace Smith, who was forced to leave the project for the lead role in “Concussion”. The talks are still early as Leto just met with director Julius Onah.
Premise: The mother of a kidnapped child realises her ex-partner is the instigator and must deal with the fall-out when he is double-crossed.
Production History: In November of 2014, Screen Daily, reported that Noomi Rapace would play the desperate mother of a kidnapped child in “The Price”, which worldwide rights holder Cargo Entertainment was selling at AFM. Buyers have responded strongly to the package about a woman who learns she can only recover her kidnapped son if she provides a blonde girl of the same age in exchange. Writer-director Siofra Campbell and the producers are ramping up for a February Berlin shoot. Peggy Cafferty and Patrick Campbell were mentioned to serve as producers alongside Germany’s Sven Woldt. In 2015, Michael Shannon and German actor Matthias Schweighöfer were announced by Cargo Entertainment to have joined the cast. From here on, no more news were announced and the project was cancelled during pre-production without any reason given.
Premise: Based on Kosinski’s unpublished graphic novel of the same name, the film pays homage to 1970s sci-fi, and is a love story set in 2077 on an Earth desolated by an alien war; a maintenance technician on the verge of completing his mission finds a woman who survived from a space ship crash, leading him to question his purpose and discover the truth about the war.
Production History: While talks on a possible role in “Mission Impossible 4” the year before (see below), Noomi was also among the actresses considered for yet another Cruise-vehicle, “Oblivion”. According to Collider, a diverse who’s-who of Hollywood actresses tested for the female lead – Jessica Chastain, Olivia Wilde, Brit Marling, Noomi Rapace and Olga Kurylenko were among the thesps testing Saturday – though others are still under consideration. Universal had no comment on the shortlist. The role of Jack’s wife Julia ultimately went to Kurylenko and “Oblivion” was theatrically released in 2013, grossing over $280 million.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2011)
Premise: After getting a taste for blood as children, Hansel and Gretel have become the ultimate vigilantes, hell-bent on retribution. Now, unbeknownst to them, Hansel and Gretel have become the hunted, and must face an evil far greater than witches… their past.
Production History: In the midst of an international promotion for “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”, Noomi Rapace was considered for the lead role in Tommy Wirkola’s “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” alongside Jeremy Renner. The involvement fell flat when Rapace was cast in “Prometheus” and the Gretel role went to Gemma Arterton. There was no bad blood between the director and the actress – Wirkola and Rapace worked together very effectively on both “What Happened to Monday?” and “The Trip”.
Premise: Boss Hogberg’s life and career was the stuff of “Raging Bull”-esque legend: The product of a working-class Gothenburg neighborhood, Hogberg captured the light-middleweight title (and lost it three weeks later), boxed through pain (he once fought 14 rounds with a broken jaw), romanced starlets, dealt with alcoholism and ran into legal troubles like Jack Thompson used to run into right hooks. His life changed – somewhat – when he met and married singer Anita Lindblom.
Production History: The Los Angeles Times announced exclusively in October of 2010 that Noomi Rapace would be taking the lead part in a new boxing movie based on Boos Hogberg’s life, playing his wife and singer Anita Lindblom opposite her real-life ex-husband, Ola Rapace. As the article continued, even with Noomi Rapace’s schedule filling up, producers said they’re not concerned about timing, with the idea to shoot the as-yet-untitled film as early as the Summer of 2011 in Sweden and France. Catherine Hardwicke was announced as director in the Summer of 2011, but withdrew a couple of months later. The project was not supported by Lindblom as well, who did not mince words when talking about the project on the Swedish radio programme Sommarsamtalet i P1, as reported by Aftonbladet: “First of all, [Rapace] is not like me at all. She is small. I have breasts and she doesn’t. They know nothing about me.” The singer believed that the film project is not done out of love for her and Högberg. She accused the producers of only wanting to make money from her life story. By the end of 2012, two weeks before filming was set to begin, the project was put on hold due to financial reasons and then ultimately cancelled.
Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2010)
Premise: Ethan Hunt and his team are racing against time to track down a dangerous terrorist named Hendricks, who has gained access to Russian nuclear launch codes and is planning a strike on the United States. An attempt to stop him ends in an explosion causing severe destruction to the Kremlin and the IMF to be implicated in the bombing, forcing the President to disavow them.
Production History: Cinema Blend was first to report that Noomi Rapace was in talks to join Tom Cruise for the fourth installment of “Mission Impossible” during her visit to the United States for the promotion of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and accompanying meetings with directors and producers for potential projects (ultimately resulting in “Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows” and “Prometheus”).
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2010)
Premise: The crew of the merchant ship Demeter attempts to survive the ocean voyage from Carpathia to London as they are stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship.
Production History: In October of 2014, The Los Angeles Times reported that Noomi Rapace was set to come aboard the “The Last Voyage of Demeter,” about the ill-fated journey of Dracula’s coffin from Transylvania to England, according to sources familiar with the project. Rapace is expected to play a stowaway on the boat, which according to legend arrived at its port with no survivors, prompting speculation that the vampire corpse made a little mayhem. Ben Kingsley was also announced to co-star, while a lead actor is in the process of being cast. A couple of months later, in March of 2011, Rapace herself cast doubt about her casting due to her busy Hollywood schedule, according to Empire: “I’m occupied until late July or August… For the moment I don’t want to decide what to do next. I think I’d like to do something quite small.” It took 13 years for the film to be finally made and be released in theaters, directed by André Øvredal and starring Italian actress Aisling Franciosi in the role meant for Rapace originally.
Production History: During the promotional tour for “The Girl Who Played with Fire”, Noomi Rapace told DN Magazine that she has been offered a key role in the upcoming film “Clean Out”. The cast already consisted of Mads Mikkelsen, Harvey Keitel and Timothy Dalton. Rapace said: “This role is not something I auditioned for or sought out, and that’s why it feels easier to enter such a large production that several countries co-produce: When you feel that the director really wants you with instead of you coming and asking to be be involved”. But just like Grossmann’s other project, “The Nazi Officer’s Wife”, this project was shelfed shortly before production started, as co-star Mads Mikkelsen told Expressen in 2013:
It’s closed. Sometimes stuff happens quickly in this industry. This closed down because of money. It was closed. We didn’t start shooting, but it was the day before we planned to start.“ And that was even the second movie project in which he should be paired with “Lisbeth Salander”. The first one – true-life drama “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” – has been frozen too. The last one also closed down. It was an interesting story, but I still hope to work with Noomi Rapace one day. I have met many actresses in my life who could play a lot of things. But I have never met anyone who had such an engagement like Noomi. I thought I was pretty radical, but I just sat and stare. Other great actresses can spend some time figuring out how they will look in front of the camera. Noomi goes to extremes and does not care if she looks good or not. She has a radicality which is amazing. I hope I’ll be allowed to play with her one day.
The Nazi Officer’s Wife (2010)
Premise: The story of a beautiful young Jewish law student who did not try to escape Austria because she would not leave her widowed mother or her half-Jewish classmate, Pepi, with whom she had fallen in love. Together, they share the shock of watching Hitler devour the countries of Eastern Europe without a shot and soon annex their own Vienna, upon which most of the gentile citizens are delirious with joy and viciously begin to attack their former Jewish neighbors and classmates.
Production History: Noomi scored her first potential English speaking role in Barthelemy Grossmann’s “The Nazi Officer’s Wife,” which was set to begin principle photography in Europe in September of 2010. Rapace was annouunced to star alongside fellow Scandi actor Mads Mikkelsen in the adaptation of the Edith Hahn Beer book about an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust living under an assumed identity and who ended up marrying a Nazi officer. The director and cast attended the 2010 Cannes Film Festival to promote the project, which was cancelled before shooting began.